


Life

by Draco_sollicitus



Series: After EpIX [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: And I mean Gentle, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Happy Ending, Love, Love Confessions, Oneshot, Post-War, Romance, The Force Ships It, gentle smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 01:06:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20921642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: After the war, Rey of Jakku tries to find a place to settle down. Poe Dameron watches as she moves from place to place, searching for her home, fighting back the urge to ask to stay by her side.Then, on Yavin 4, Rey asks Poe a question that tilts his entire galaxy on its head.





	Life

After the First Order fell, Rey asked to be left on Tatooine. 

Finn hesitated for a long time, but Poe watched the Jedi-Not-Jedi pull him aside; they spoke for nearly an hour, but when they returned, Finn was supportive of Rey’s decision to stay on the Lars homestead for an undetermined amount of time.

“I’ll miss you,” Rose said fiercely as she pulled Rey into a hug. 

“You only ever have to call,” Jannah said warmly, squeezing Rey’s hands in a fond embrace. She stood with Finn and Rose while Poe tried to make a similarly dignified farewell. 

“I—”  _ You don’t have to be alone,  _ he wanted to say.  _ I don’t want you to be alone.  _

“Take good care of the Falcon,” Rey spoke before he could get anything out. “Or Chewie will have your head.”

_ Don’t want the Falcon,  _ his mutinous heart tried to get him to say.  _ I want y—  _

“Thanks, Sunshine.” He was tired from the war. Tired from losing Leia. From losing friends. From losing Rey, and she hadn’t even been lost. Not really. “I’ll see you soon, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Rey nodded, and then threw her arms around him, an unsure and embarrassed hug that she pulled away from far too quickly.

He had to be the one to power up the engines and lift off that godsforsaken rock, had to look through the starviewer to watch the steadily receding figure waving goodbye from her perch on the sandy dome. 

“I’ll be back,” he said, even though she couldn’t hear his promise as he clicked the thrusters on and engaged the final ignition sequence. “I’m coming back, Sunshine.”

* * *

The next months were dizzying as the Resistance tried to combat galactic insurrections caused by the power vacuum of the First Order. Poe barely had a chance to breathe, let alone see Rose or Finn or Jannah. No communications from Tatooine was both a blessing (nothing bad had happened) and a curse (he had no idea how Rey was doing, and he missed her, gods, he missed her, he missed her, hemissedherhemissedher), and Poe put his fear to the back of his mind as he tried to lead the steadily growing Resistance to assist in the formation of the New Senate.

He was offered First Senator, turned down First Senator, watched Finn be elected senator, with the agreement that there wouldn’t  _ be  _ a First Senator or a chance for anyone to seize more power than another person in the Senate. He watched Rose settle into position as the head of defensive technology, watched her help rebuild destroyed worlds. He watched Jannah reconnect with her father, watched her become a better leader than he could ever be, watched her rise through the ranks.

It was the day after he stepped down from his role of General, so that Jannah Calrissian could become General, that he received a short message on the comms that had been specially designed by Rose, comms only accessible to five people in the entire galaxy.

_ Ahch-To,  _ it said. 

He got on the Falcon and flew for three days straight.

“This isn’t the desert,” he joked as he walked down the ramp onto the rocky shore. 

Rey smiled at him, her face drawn but her happiness genuine. She was sitting cross-legged on a dark, damp rock, and he wondered, painfully, how long she’d been sitting there before he arrived.

It was cold there, and slightly dark, no sign of the sun as a light rain fell over the island. It was no place for Rey, Poe knew, and he wondered why she was there.

She was punishing herself, he learned, punishing herself for thoughts she’d had on Tatooine, a fear she was trying to escape, a fear of hurting those she loved.

“You’d never hurt us,” Poe promised her quietly, after he’d wrapped her in his favorite blanket and parked her on his bunk. He sat on the floor, a cup of caf in his hands, warming him as well as it could with the pervasive chill in the air. 

Rey stared at the bulkhead, not saying anything but shivering at strange times. 

It felt wrong on the island, something Poe had noticed the second he landed. If the Tree back home was light, this place was oddly … neutral. He didn’t care for it, hated how cold it made him feel. 

“You can’t stay here,” he said firmly, and that sparked something in Rey.

They argued for half an hour before she sagged against the wall and nodded. “I can’t stay here,” she agreed. “But where will I go?”

“Where do you want to go?” He asked her curiously— not the desert, he knew, and not this grim hunk of rock. “Anywhere you want to go, I’ll take you.”

_ Stay,  _ he wanted to say.  _ Stay with me, I’ll go anywhere with you. Just stay. Don’t be alone. Not when we could be together.  _

But he’d been alone, it felt like, since the end of the war, and he was old, and tired, and she was young, and full of so much life. The words stayed locked in his chest where they’d never hurt her, or trap her.

“I want to go somewhere beautiful,” she said after a long time, and her gaze was heavy when it landed on him. She looked tired, but she was still so beautiful, more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen, and his mind blanked on everything but that fact for a painful moment. “I want to go somewhere— somewhere like I’ve never seen. Do you know anything like that?”

Poe racked his brain for a second, demanding an answer on her behalf, and then he smiled and nodded. “Yeah. I know just the place.”

* * *

Lando sent him updates from Bespin. He sometimes sent obnoxious-proud -father updates of his daughter, the General, but mostly he sent messages about the girl who stood at the edge of the city in the sky, her head in the clouds, her arms outstretched as she laughed wildly in the face of a ten thousand foot plummet. 

“ _ Like a bird,”  _ he said once,  _ “Like the most incredible bird you’d ever seen. I swear, even if she fell, I think she would just fly _ .”

Poe would study his holopad on those days, a smile on his face as he imagined Rey, unchained and untethered, flying through the clouds. He flew around the galaxy in those months, helping where he could, bringing relief to the most poverty-stricken corners of the galaxy, sometimes connecting with the remnants of Black Squadron, sometimes seeing Finn and Rose and their new baby, and as those months became a year, he always waited for a message without realizing he was waiting for it.

“ _ She asked if you were coming to visit, _ ” Lando would say, his voice knowing even over the crackle of static, and every time he sent the message, Poe would come.

He would go to Bespin, the pilot who loved the air more than anything, it seemed, and watch as the girl from the desert found herself among the clouds. She was light, and beautiful, and it ached. He wouldn’t trade it for anything, that ache, wouldn’t trade her smiling over her shoulder at him as she stood out on the farthest reach of Bespin, arms outstretched in complete faith of the Force. 

It ached, but every time she asked, he came. He would stay a day or two until his holopad lit up with another message from the galaxy, somewhere was needed, and as the year wore on, his goodbyes shifted as surely as the clouds around them.

At the end of her first year on Bespin, he stood in the center of her chambers, windows all around them, her hand in his, and he swore she wanted to say something, right before she whispered, “ _ Goodbye, flyboy. _ ”

There was a flood on an exoplanet fifteen lightyears away, and he had to go, had to help secure the region, help the survivors— Senator Finn had asked him, and he would always say yes to his best friend. But, with Rey’s hand in his, her eyes on the window, a sadness he thought he might be projecting on her face, he regretted saying yes.

“I’ll see you soon, Sunshine,” he promised.

It took an eon to let go of her hand.

* * *

After Bespin, Rey moved to Yavin 4, and when he heard the news from Lando, Poe thought he might be mishearing.

She didn’t tell him herself, after all, so she might not want him to come visit. Why else would she avoid telling him that she’d moved to his home? The Force Tree was there, after all, and Lando told him Rey mentioned wanting to be near it. It wasn’t about him, her moving to Yavin, not at all, so he stayed away.

Stayed away until the message came, three months later.

_ When are you coming, flyboy? _

He turned the Falcon around, dropping out of Hyperspace mid-journey, only to turn the old bird around and punch it again.

* * *

The heat of the jungle surrounded him like an old friend as he walked down the ramp.

He’d landed at the old site where he’d always landed when visiting his father. Kes wasn’t home, wouldn’t be home for a few months, as he had gone to speak for the smaller planets at the Senate. 

The ground itself felt right as he walked through the familiar trees, down the path to the Force Tree. There, in the clearing, was a ramshackle hut, more of a collection of different parts that had been cobbled together into a shelter. It would hold up, he could tell at first glance, to the rains, but something in him ached, an odd sort of ache that told him the sight of Rey living there wasn’t quite right. The location was right, but the house…

She was proud of her house, regardless, and he did the tour cheerfully, tried not to let his eyes linger on her too much, and failed as always. Rey was happy, joyous even, there in the light of the Force Tree, and Poe found his own spirits lightening like they hadn’t in years.

It was after dinner, after they’d scraped the stew clean from the bottom of their bowls, that Rey made his heart come staggering to a stop.

“There was something I wanted to ask you,” she said softly.

“Mhm?” He set his bowl aside and wiped his mouth a little messily. 

Rey licked the corner of her lip where some liquid had gathered, and Poe tried not to track the movement of her tongue, tried not to watch the quirk of her mouth. Failed. 

“Okay.” She wiped her hands on her leggings and nodded, closing her eyes and then releasing a breath. “The last few years have been … well. I don’t have to tell you.” He nodded in agreement. “But, I— I have had a lot of time to think, and it was different than thinking on Jakku because while I was alone, mostly, I wasn’t alone and trying to survive, so it made it easier to … to see things.”

“Right.” That made sense, even though the idea of Rey being alone for any reason was painful.

“Right,” she echoed, and then she lifted her eyes to his face and held him in place with her large eyes. “And I was thinking … I was thinking, that I want a family.”

“You have a family,” Poe said automatically, his heart crying out for her. “You do, Sunshine. You’ve got Finn, and Rose, and Jannah. Chewie — hell, even Lando loves you. We’re all your family, Rey. Me included.”

“Yes, but,” Rey squirmed but then seemed to set her jaw in determination, and Poe couldn’t make sense of it. Not until: “You, in particular though. I - I want you to be my family.”

“I am,” Poe wanted to shout it. Of course he was. He was her family, they’d almost died together, they’d fought together, he cared about her more than anything in the whole galaxy-

“You don’t understand.” Rey laughed and shook her head. “I want  _ you  _ to be my family; I want a family  _ with  _ you.”

The galaxy, and everything Poe had thought he knew about it, seemed to collapse on itself in that moment. He pointed at himself mutely, unable to find his voice.

“Yes. You.”

“Uh.” He shook his head and coughed. “Rey, I— I’m … I’m old?”

He was. It was true. It was one of the few truths he could summon at the moment, now that Rey had shocked him so thoroughly and removed a lot of the truths he thought he had a pretty good grasp on before.

“You’re thirty-five, Poe, you aren’t  _ ancient. _ ”

“Thanks,” he muttered. “But- Rey, I’m - I can’t be what you want.”

She scoffed angrily, and he fell silent, still reeling.

“I’ve been through enough to know my own heart, Poe.” Even in his shock, Poe was electrified further by the sound of his name in her voice, the way he always was. 

She placed a hand on his knee. “And I’ve seen enough, and been hurt enough, to know the worth of yours.”

“Rey, I—” Poe pulled his hand away from her soft cheek with great difficulty and returned it to his lap. He licked his lip and ducked his head, huffing shyly. “—I’m just a … a scruffy pilot who knows a few tricks, I’m nothing special, but  _ you _ —”

“But nothing.” She slipped her hand through his and smiled, all boldness and softness, that perfect combination that was always Rey. “How can you sit here,” she nodded to the Tree that glowed everbright in the corner of the clearing, “And tell me you aren’t special? Can’t you feel how the Force loves you?”

A hum wrapped around them, as though acknowledging her words, and Poe blushed, flames warming him from head to toe, embarrassed and shy the way one was when confronted with truth. The Force  _ did  _ love him— it would be falsely modest, rude even, to deny it. How else could he explain his childhood, his skill at piloting, the very fact that he was still  _ alive _ when so many were dead? 

Rey’s face was pink now, her eyes bright in the glow of the Tree, but she spoke as steadily as ever as she lifted his hand again and placed it on her sternum — Poe’s fingers curled inward involuntarily, his breath caught somewhere in his throat, before he smoothed them flat — pressing her own hand over the back of his: “Can’t you … can’t you feel how  _ I  _ love you?”

The humming increased, a flare of brightness at the back of Poe’s awareness, but he could barely note it, not when her words rolled around his head like thunder in the mountains, crashing and crescendoing until every thought was— 

“Rey.” He shook his head, voice hoarse as though he’d run for klicks and klicks in the desert. “I— you want me to be your family? I am, Rey, kriff, I’m your family, of course I am—”

“Poe.” Silenced again, poleaxed by her voice, destroyed by her smile, obliterated by her touch as she stroked her fingers along the back of his hand, still pressed to her skin, fingers curling just so over the hollow over her collarbone. “I want a family  _ with  _ you. Do you—am I saying that right? I wasn’t sure how to ask, but I know— I know what I want, even if I don’t know how to ask.”

“Yeah.” Poe swallowed through the dryness of his throat, pulled his hand away from her chest, from the sturdy beating of her heart, to collect her hand and bring it to his mouth. He pressed a kiss to her roughened fingertips, then to her scarred knuckles, and nodded again. “I read you, Sunshine. Loud and clear.”

“Yeah?” Rey’s smile outshone the Force Tree; that thought was probably blasphemy, somewhere along the line, but Poe realized he didn’t care.

“Yes.” He nodded, normally at first, then in increasing speed and with a burst of laughter that started somewhere low in his gut and hung in the air around them when it was free, he grabbed her other hand tightly. “Yes, Rey, yes, I want a family  _ with  _ you. I want to build a family with you. Holy kriffing  _ Force  _ I do. I— I want to build you a house, a real house, a great, big house, and I want to— to fill every room with things from every corner of the galaxy, just so you always look around and know that— that I brought them for you, so you’d look and always remember that I—”

Rey’s smile was still bright, her nose wrinkled now with the happiness of it, but Poe could have smacked himself in the head.

“I’m doing this wrong.” He slid off the sawed log and fell to his knees, still clutching Rey’s hands. “I love you. So kriffing much, Rey, you have no idea.”

“Oh, that’s nice.” Rey giggled, and the light around them flared, or at least, Poe swore it did. “I like the way you say that.”

“Yeah?” Poe laughed too, and pressed his forehead into her knee, almost sobbing now. “I’ll say it every day, Sunshine, because I do. I love you.” He removed his hands from hers and wrapped them around her calves, smoothing his thumbs through the soft silk of hair there, marveling at the long lines of muscle that held such power even now, even in a moment of peace. “I love you,” he repeated, voice cracking.

Rey’s fingers threaded through his hair, scratching along his scalp with her blunt nails, and Poe laughed again, skipped a breath, and sobbed. A tear slipped from his eye and soaked into her leggings, and Rey curved herself over him, her arms wrapping around his back, his shoulders, covering him and making him feel safer than he had since a monster in a mask shackled him down and ripped through his head.

All of it, the lingering pain of the war, the grief he carried in his chest even on good days, the fear that chased him around dark corners, faded into a static in Rey’s arms, a static that was much easier to carry. And, with nothing but the Force Tree as witness, Poe continued to whisper how much he loved her, and Rey, astoundingly, miraculously, wonderfully, continued to whisper it back. 

After many moments of calm, Rey tapped his shoulder until he looked up— and when he did, the breath got knocked out of him all over again. The stars had risen on Yavin 4, their sister moons glowing in the distance, casting a natural light that only worked to emphasize the Force Tree’s light. And Rey sat, unaware, in the middle of it, unaware of how she wore the stars like a crown, of how she pulled the light down around her and became the center to it— or maybe that was because she had been the center of everything for so long for him. 

“Will you come with me?” Rey took his hand and pulled lightly; he went to his feet, following her with almost no effort on her part. 

“Anywhere,” he swore, meaning every syllable. “I’d go anywhere with you.”

“That’s good.” She threaded their fingers together and pulled again, taking a step backwards. “But I was thinking we could start with bed?”

Bold, shy, naive, wise: Rey in all her glorious contradictions stood under the stars and offered this to him like it was nothing, as though she had no idea it was everything— but maybe she did know, and saw it as simply as she saw most things. Truths were accessible to Rey, Poe knew, and always had been. She’d learned how to discern truth, and had fought for those truths by his side, and now she was offering him this final truth, and his voice was almost lost in the power of it.

“Yeah. I mean— yes, yes, we should—” Rey laughed at his eager nodding, and Poe let her pull him forward.

He tripped over his own feet, but thankfully stayed upright to follow her into her small hut, the light not fading as they left the canopy of stars. 

Her skin was smooth where he skimmed his palms over her arms, body warm as she stepped in closer to him. She was real, and warm, and she wanted him. Wanted a family with him. And, as he took in the sight of her in front of her small, unmade bed, it felt more sacred than anything he’d found in any corner of the galaxy.

“You’re shaking.”

Poe blinked and looked up, back to her bright, hazel eyes, and then down to his hands which were, as she said, violently trembling. “I am,” he agreed, huffing a laugh. “I just— really want this. Want you. I mean,” he winced, embarrassed at how quickly he was reduced to monosyllabism. 

Rey didn’t seem to care; she stepped forward until they were nearly pressed together, and smoothed her hands over his chest, fingers skimming curiously over the muscles there, and then up and past the ring that hung around his neck, another flare of heat that cut through him. “Well, then,” she whispered, pushing her hands under his jacket, pushing it off his shoulders. He helped her, shrugging until he could pull it free, and then Rey took his hands again, and guided them to where her tunic wrapped around her waist.

“How much of this have you done?” Poe asked, hands still shaking as he toyed with the fabric, not pulling the knot free, not yet. 

“None of it.” For the first time, Rey did sound fully shy, and her bottom lip was caught between her teeth. 

Poe smoothed it with his thumb until she freed it, then he replaced his thumb with his mouth, kissing her for the first time, kissing her until she gasped, until she dug her fingers into his chest, his shoulders. She tasted like nothing he’d ever encountered, and he was dizzy from it, from the knowledge of what Rey tasted like. 

“And you?” Rey gasped when they broke apart. “How much of this have you done?”

“Some of it,” he admitted with a shrug. Rey didn’t seem bothered by the knowledge. “Not all of it. Never found the right partner, I guess.”

“Some of it,” Rey repeated with a nod, and he could see her storing the information away, like a particularly good piece of scrap. “Like?”

“Like this.” He began to unwind the fabric that wrapped around her, watching her face the whole time. “This okay?”

“Mhm.” Rey seemed preoccupied by the sight of his hands, and he had to admit it was a pretty effect, his tan skin tangled in the white cloth. The white cloth was reminiscent enough of the dress a girl wore to be married on Yavin, and he blushed at the thought of it, blushed even as the fabric fell away from Rey’s body and pooled around them on the floor. 

In only her bindings and leggings, Rey smiled at him encouragingly and folded an arm behind her back. “These are impossible for me sometimes,” she explained, and Poe was privately relieved because he hadn’t done this a lot, no matter what Black Squadron teased him about, and the last thing he wanted was to embarrass himself further by being unable to handle tricky fastenings. 

The bindings fluttered to the floor sometime around the moment his jaw did too, and then they were kissing again, initiated by Rey, who pulled him backwards to the bed. He showed her what he  _ had  _ done before, but _ never like this _ , he whispered into the dip of skin under her left breast,  _ never like this _ , he’d never felt like this, like a volcano erupting under his skin at the same time the galaxy settled and began to make sense. 

Clever fingers scrambled at his shirt until it joined the pools of fabric already on the ground, and Rey left her marks on his skin as clearly as she had left them on his soul; somewhere around the time they helped each other climb out of their pants while still touching as much as possible, Poe remembered why they were here, and he was shaking again as Rey pulled him upright and then swung herself over his lap.

“Yeah?” He whispered, voice not breaking but broken, fingers trembling as he stroked where she was warmest, where she was softest, and her eyes shut briefly before she kissed along his jaw and nodded into his neck. 

“Yeah.” She breathed, voice skating along the cords of his throat as he swallowed and kneaded the firm muscles of her ass, lifting her and admiring every contradiction he felt— the softness of her skin, the strength of her thighs, the slick heat of her, the dryness in his throat as the truth overwhelmed him once more— and then Rey sank down fully, drawing a tangled gasp from both their mouths until Rey ducked her head and kissed him again.

“Aren’t you supposed to move, flyboy?” She whispered as the sweat trickled down Poe’s back in the humid, dark room— he felt it slipping down Rey’s back as well, pooling against his hand as he kept a palm flat to her spine to guide her through the early motions. 

It was all heat after that, a drowsy heat that didn’t urge him forward into a faster pace, but one that caught his breath powerfully, made his eyes feel heavy as Rey leaned back, hands gripping his crossed ankles, relying on his knees for balance as she closed her eyes in bliss. He slipped a hand between their bodies and thrummed a rhythm he instinctively knew, even if he’d never had a chance to practice it before, listening to the hitch and whine of Rey’s breath while she took her pleasure and gave it back to him again and again. 

He found himself murmuring as the heat built along his spine: “—family, sweetheart, we’re family, you and me, I love you, we’ll have a big family—”

She tilted forward at the last promise, hands gripping his face while she kissed him hard, and he wasn’t sure if it was her tears or his that slipped over her hands, but all he knew and felt was Rey. 

“I love you,” she whispered while they were lying down, still mostly fitted together, her leg swung over his hip, his hand stroking along her thigh. Her fingers traced a pattern through the smattering of dark chest hair on the middle of his sternum, and she smiled when he kissed her shoulder. 

“Love you, Sunshine,” he whispered back, and they both fell asleep smiling.

* * *

In the morning, he woke to find Rey studying his face, wearing nothing but a strangely closed expression.

“Was’it?” He mumbled, blinking sleep out of his eyes. She didn’t pull away when he placed a hand on the dip of her waist, and he took that to mean he was okay to kiss her, despite his morning breath. 

Rey sighed happily and was smiling when he pulled away. “I was— I don’t know, I thought you might … might not stay the night?” She averted her eyes and stared over his shoulder, until he tugged at her and smiled sadly at her uncertainty. “Not that— I think that of you, I only meant, I know you’re busy, and you weren’t able to stay long the last few times we visited, and I didn’t expect you to spend so much time here—”

“If we’re going to have a family,” Poe said clearly, no longer tired, but seeing things as sharply as he did from the cockpit, “then I’m going to stay here. With you. As long as you want me.”

“Do you mean that?” She didn’t ask out of doubt of his word, he knew, but rather out of a fear built from a lifetime of being left. It would be a long, uphill battle to help Rey unlearn that fear, but he knew it would be the best battle of his life. 

“I mean it. I’m not going anywhere. The galaxy can survive without us for a few years, don’t you think?”

“Yeah.” Rey grinned and burrowed in closer to him under the blankets, warming him immediately. She pressed her face into his bare chest where he could still feel her smiling. “How many years could you spare, General Dameron?”

“I don’t know.” He stroked his fingers down her spine and dropped a kiss into her hair. “How many kids did you want, Master Rey?”

A few hundred yards away, a flock of whisper birds took to the air, hooting scoldingly as a shout echoed around the Force Tree clearing, a shout of utter joy and delighted incredulity:

“ _ SEVEN?”  _

  
  
  
  



End file.
